That with all these favorable conditions our infantile mortality should so nearly approximate that of England, that of every thousand deaths 307.8 should be of children under five years of age—according to the crude figures of the census, more if a correct registration upon the same basis as the English figures could be had—is a matter of grave national concern. If we make an arbitrary allowance of 20 per cent, to account for the slight improvement shown by the death-rates and for other differences, and regard 30 per cent of the infantile death-rate as being due to socially preventable causes, instead of 50 per cent, as in the case of England, we have an appalling total of more than 95,000 unnecessary deaths in a single year. And of these “socially preventable” causes there can be no doubt that the various phases of poverty represent fully 85 per cent, giving an annual sacrifice to poverty of practically 80,000 baby lives. If some modern Herod had caused the death of every male child under twelve months of age in the state of New York in the year 1900, not a single child escaping, the number thus brutally slaughtered would have been practically identical with this sacrifice. Poverty is the Herod of modern civilization, and Justice the warning angel calling upon society to “arise and take the young child” out of the reach of the monster’s wrath. III If our vital statistics were specially designed to that end, they could not hide the relation of poverty to disease and death more effectually than they do now. It is impossible to tell from any of the elaborate tables compiled by the census authorities what proportion of the total number of infant deaths were due to defective nutrition or other conditions primarily associated with poverty. No one who has studied the question doubts that the proportion is very great, but it is impossible to present the matter statistically, except in the form of a crude estimate. There is much of value in our great collections of statistics, but the most vital facts of all are rarely included in them.